Re:Claude Shannon: How a Genius Thinks, Works, and Lives
by joe_the_user on Friday July 21, 2017 @03:33PM
(#14823231)
I think there are two parts to the general idea of genius.
One part is the claim that some people are fundamentally more intelligent than others. I agree that this is good to discard.
But another part is that some people can make quantum advances in a given field. I think that is worth considering. It seems reasonable to think that some advances in a field are incremental and require simple effort and that other advances involves a jump - either digging very deeply into a still unsolved problem or taking insights from entirely different fields. Here, the term "genius" is good. Not implying an average person can't achieve a "genius insight" but that such insight may require reflection, a willingness to go down possibly blind allies, a willingness to take a different point of view from a different field, a willingness to challenge consensus views within one's own field and so-forth.
And this is also to say that "following your genius" may indeed be a great gamble. Combining a variety of seeming deep relations may result in something great or it may just result in a large project that falls apart on close inspection.
And here, one might say taste and temperament enter into what could be a genius approach (or oppositely, could be a disaster).
One part is the claim that some people are fundamentally more intelligent than others. I agree that this is good to discard.
But another part is that some people can make quantum advances in a given field. I think that is worth considering. It seems reasonable to think that some advances in a field are incremental and require simple effort and that other advances involves a jump - either digging very deeply into a still unsolved problem or taking insights from entirely different fields. Here, the term "genius" is good. Not implying an average person can't achieve a "genius insight" but that such insight may require reflection, a willingness to go down possibly blind allies, a willingness to take a different point of view from a different field, a willingness to challenge consensus views within one's own field and so-forth.
And this is also to say that "following your genius" may indeed be a great gamble. Combining a variety of seeming deep relations may result in something great or it may just result in a large project that falls apart on close inspection.
And here, one might say taste and temperament enter into what could be a genius approach (or oppositely, could be a disaster).